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T O P I C R E V I E W

Robert Pearlman

While at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center today to photograph the installation of the MMU, the floatation collar and uprighting balloons used by Apollo 11 were added to the display of a Command Module boilerplate used for water training.

It is really a testament to the Smithsonian's staff that these items still exist in such good condition today - especially when you consider the direct exposure to salt water that these cloth and rubber pieces were subjected to as part of their intended use.

Jurg Bolli

Great story, Robert, I can't wait to see the new museum with all that extra stuff!Jurg

tedc

Robert,

Thanks for giving us the opportunity to have a look at these historical artifacts. I need to get back to D.C.

aneedell

Robert,

Thanks for the report. You might be interested to know how we managed to "inflate" the Apollo 11 flotation collar. We didn't want to try to use air or to fill it with inert peanuts, so we located the kind of flexible air duct that is used for a/c systems and covered it with an acid free covering. In your image you can see the duct in that we still have install the end caps. We are supporting the collar with a special set of brackets and platform that attaches to existing treaded holes in BP1102a (the actual water egress trainer used by the Apollo astronauts). We didn't want the original cord to bear the collar's weight all by itself.

The righting spheres were dissassembled, cleaned and reassembled around specially constructed geodesic type polygons. Much credit goes to Ed McManus, the NASM conservator and several interns and helpers.

Allan

John K. Rochester

I hope that the museum staff can correct the misspelling of Flotation on the Plaques detailing what the items are..

thump

according to Webster's "floatation" is a varient spelling of flotation.

aneedell

quote:Originally posted by John K. Rochester:I hope that the museum staff can correct the misspelling of Flotation on the Plaques detailing what the items are..

Nice catch. I actually noticed the spelling in Robert's picture also. We had gone back and forth a year ago about the spelling of flotation. (Do a Google search on both (Apollo flotation) and (Apollo floatation) and you'll find the collar and spheres referred to both ways. In any case, the final script I submitted used "flotation" in both the text and the title. Now it is inconsistent and we can't figure out when the "a" was introduced or why neither I nor the editor caught it.

We just put in an order to print new labels with "flotation" throughout. I suppose if that turns out to be the worse mistake we've made in the hundreds of labels at the UHC we should be relatively happy. Probably won't be, though.